Norman Ollestad “Crazy for the Storm”

Eleven-year-old Norman Ollestad was on his way to pick up a trophy for winning a youth skiing championship on February 19, 1979. His father chartered a Cessna airplane to take him and Norman from L.A. to Big Bear City. With them were Norman’s dad’s girlfriend, and the pilot of the plane, four people in all — and only one would live to see the end of the day.

The plane wandered off course in a blinding blizzard and smashed into an 8,600-foot mountain. The pilot and Norman’s father were killed instantly. Sandra, the girlfriend, was badly hurt but survived, for a while. But only 11-year-old Norman, whose father had trained him to be rugged and bold, survived, by painstakingly working his way down the mountain, by his fingertips. Now, 30 years later, he’s ready to tell the story, in a book called “Crazy for the Storm.”

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